India’s capital – A hellhole

Delhi has seen it all. When Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal says "the efforts must be visible," what is visible is the politics of vengeance being played out. A nasty game of political vendetta is being played out in the open by both the AAP and the BJP governments. Both know that Delhi sits on a health tinderbox.

Yet they wait for the situation to worsen to launch a tirade against the other. In case of power outages we have seen it. When water shortage hit the city during the summers, we saw them squabble. During the municipal workers strike as filth mounds piled around, these two were at each other's throat. People did not get any relief. The Delhi of lanes, by lanes, filth and squalor is nobody's child

One finds in the newspapers of the national capital, of late, advertisements of anti-insect sprays. Goat milk is being sold online at Rs 1,200 per litre. Papaya leaves are being sold at Rs 300 apiece. Odomos is almost out of stock most of the time. People have lost all faith in the administration and are turning to quacks and seeking "traditional remedies" to fight dengue in Delhi.

A preventable mosquito menace is spreading across alarmingly in the capital even as the government apathy continues killing people. The usual blame game is on with the AAP pointing accusing fingers at the BJP-led municipal corporations, and the BJP leaders and MCD officials pinning the responsibility on the AAP government for not releasing funds.

In fact, 16 deaths so far this season in a city of two crores of people need not make news at all, forget the headlines. But it is not so here. Like a turning point in every such issue, it was seven-year-old Avinash Rout's death that sparked the fierce debate. Avinash was a bubbly and intelligent child who stood always first in his school in studies and extracurricular activities.

His parents committed suicide after his cremation. The outrage that followed these incidents was justifiable as several private hospitals turned him away before his death. One hospital billed the family about Rs 35,000 before sending them out. Moolchand, Max Healthcare, Kailash Hospital refused treatment before the family spent Rs 30,000 at another hospital before being told the case was out of their hands.

Dengue is preventable and people need not be subjected to this capital punishment because they live in Delhi. Alas, Delhi has two worlds – one of the netas and babus, and the other of the commoners who serve them.

Delhi has two governments: One run by the AAP and the other run by the Centre. This Delhi lives in two worlds. The rich and the powerful live in safe and comfortable zones. Life in the other Delhi just sucks. This is the world of 'Les Miserables' whose life has no value.

Though the World Health Organisation recommends five beds for a 1,000 population, the poorer Delhi has less than two. The rich Delhi has 100 cars per 1,000 population. Why do the avoidable dengue deaths recur? When three-and-half-a-year-old Neha from Okhla area comes to the famed RML Hospital it was one final attempt on part of her parents to save her.

A local nursing home treated her initially and found that her platelet count was 1.65 lakh. She was not treated for dengue. She was rushed to Madan Mohan Malaviya Hospital and the hospital treated her for fever. She was taken to Majeedia Hospital at Hamdard Nagar and the doctors treated her for sometime and pushed her out.

She was taken to Saket City Hospital. By then her platelet count dwindled to below 10,000, hence her final destination was the RML before reaching the morgue. This is not an isolated incident. Every second family in Delhi is on these rounds now. That is why this attention to the national shame! People have no faith in the Government hospitals.

This is the story of Delhi. The hospitals are brimming with patients. Thousands are queuing up in front of them suspecting dengue and the government does not have the beds despite, forcing two or three patients on each existing bed. The Delhi government runs 39 institutions with 10,994 beds, the corporations have 63 institutions with 3,797 beds.

The NDMC maintains two with 200 beds and the Central government has 27 institutions with 10,801 beds. Private hospitals and nursing homes are 973 in all with 2,176 beds. There is one autonomous body with 128 beds. The total number of beds in these is 48,096.

Records show us that there is one doctor for 1,998 people in Delhi. The pressure on the capital hospitals even greater as people from the neighbouring States keep flocking to it in thousands every day. Take for example, another iconic institution, Safdarjung Hospital. While four doctors are on duty, more than 600 hundred dengue cases are flooding the hospital every day now-a-days.

At yet another prestigious institution AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), a handful of doctors are forced to see more than 400 patients a day. There is yet another problem. The rapid test kits to diagnose dengue fever are proving to be fake ones showing false readings. Senior doctors say more than 50 per cent of the tests yield false results.

Is there any check on the quality of the kits? Has anyone tested them before using or recommending their use in the hospitals? Again, stoic silence confronts us in this regard. Private hospitals are charging about Rs 3,000 each for a test using these questionable kits whereas the government has capped the fee for antibody test and NSI at Rs 600.

Instead of containing the fall in the platelet count, the hospitals recommend platelet transfusion to one and all. Why is not there any plan of action to tackle such contingencies or emergencies in the national capital? Why could not the authorities direct the patients to all available centres? Why don't the 228 primary health centres locally screen the patients with fever before recommending them to specialty hospitals?

After the blame game, the local government has woken up to ask the civic bodies to go all out. The State health department has issued orders to open up the partially functioning three new hospitals to add 600 beds afresh in Janakpuri, Tahirpur and Ashok Vihar. It is all easy to put the burden on the others during such periods.

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation's health budget was cut by Rs10 crore by the AAP government and this year it got only Rs 9 crore out of the allocated Rs 37 crore, Mayor Ravindra Gupta adds.Delhi has seen it all. When Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal says "the efforts must be visible," what is visible is the politics of vengeance being played out.

A nasty game of political vendetta is being played out in the open by both the AAP and the BJP governments. Both know that Delhi sits on a health tinderbox. Yet they wait for the situation to worsen to launch a tirade against the other. In case of power outages we have seen it. When water shortage hit the city during the summers, we saw them squabble.

During the municipal workers strike as filth mounds piled around, these two were at each other's throat. People did not get any relief. The Delhi of lanes, by lanes, filth and squalor is nobody's child. Victor Hugo said in the prologue to his novel 'Les Mise'rables’ : “So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation,

which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible.” Delhi's governance is a national shame!

By:w chandrakanth